This invention relates to filler guides often used in looseleaf ringbinder notebooks. When an open, filled ring-binder is closed for storage, guides are intended to fold up against outer portions of the divided filler, compress the separated parts, and follow such parts up and around ring peripheries toward the upper arcs of the rings.
Usually, rings are encased in a metal spine which is attached to the ringbinder saddle. When the ringbinder and its filler open and separate, portions of the filler will gravitate to one or other of the covers. Whereas the chord across a ring, i.e., from where a ring enters and exits the spine, is less than the level diameter of the ring, some of the stock must always repose along the rings below and inward of the ring widths and overlapping the spine edges. Without some guiding means, lowermost stock is trapped in a trough under the rings, and tends to skid grudgingly as the covers close. Reluctance of covers to move smoothly is not only an annoyance but in addition makes it difficult to close a book without tearing holes in some of the filler.
A commonly supplied relief for such problems is a pair of narrow, half-hard filler guides for use between covers and filler. These rigid guides, having enlarged and elongated ring holes to facilitate their movement, provide very little leverage but do hold the filler together as it moves upward and inward to close. However, all too often, one or both of the guides themselves wedge ineffectually under the rings.